Throughout the whole of its length it steadily holds the line of the highest ridges in its course, climbing up slopes and dipping down into the intervening hollows with the least possible deviation from its onward course. The most interesting, because most complete, portion of the Wall, is that in the neighbourhood of the three loughs--Broomlee, Greenlee, and Crag Loughs, which, with Grindon Lough to the south of the Wall, boast the name of the Northumberland Lakes. On this portion of the wall is situated the large Roman station of Borcovicus, from which we have gained a great deal of our information as to what the life of the garrisons on this lonely outpost of Empire was like.
The station is situated on hilly ground, which slopes gently to the south, and is nearly five acres in extent. On entering the eastern gateway one cannot but experience a sudden thrill on seeing the deep grooves worn in the stone by the passing and repassing of Roman cart and chariot wheels. That mute witness of the daily traffic of the soldiery in those long-past centuries speaks with a most intimate note to us who eighteen hundred years afterwards come to look upon the place of their habitation. The station itself is of the usual shape of the Roman towns on the course of the Wall--oblong, with rounded corners. The greatest length lies east and west, in a line with the Wall; and two broad streets crossing each other at right angles lead from the north to the south, and from the east to the western gateways. Each of the four was originally a double gateway; but in every case one half of it has been closed up, no doubt when the garrison was declining in numbers, and the attacks of the enemy were increasing in severity.
[Illustration: NORTH GATEWAY, HOUSESTEADS AND ROMAN WALL.]
Considerable portions of the guard-chambers, one at each side of each gateway, still remain; and near one of them was found a huge stone trough, its edges deeply worn by, apparently, the frequent sharpening of knives upon it. Its use has not been determined; Dr. Bruce tells us that one of the men engaged in the work of excavation gave it as his firm opinion that the Romans used it to wash their Scotch prisoners in! The buildings of the little town--a row of houses against the western wall, two large buildings near the centre of the camp, with smaller chambers to the east of them--in which the garrison lived, worked, and stored their supplies, are still quite plainly to be traced, although the walls are only three or four courses high in most places, and of the pillars the broken bases are almost all that remain.